The Cords of Vanity: A Comedy of Shirking by James Branch Cabell (free reads .txt) 📖

And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. It would be good to have her back,—to have her back to jeer at me, to make me feel red and uncomfortable and ridiculous, to say rude things about my waist, and indeed to fluster me just by being there. Yes, it would be good. But, upon the whole, I am not sorry that Stella is gone.

For there is Peter Blagden to be considered. We can all agree to-day that Peter is a good fellow, that he is making the most of his Uncle Larry's money, and that he is nobody's enemy but his own; and we have smugly forgotten the time when we expected him to become a great lawyer. We do not expect that of Peter now; instead, we are content enough—particularly since Peter has so admirably dressed his part by taking to longish hair and gruffness and a cane,—to point him out to strangers in Lichfield as "one of our wealthiest men," and to elect him to all civic committees, and to discuss his semi-annual sprees and his monetary relations with various women whom one does not "know." And the present Mrs. Blagden, too, appears content enough.

And as Stella loved him—

Well, as it was, Peter was then off on his honeymoon, and there was only I to bring the daffodils to Stella. She was always vain, was Stella; it would have grieved her had no one remembered.

3

Then I caught the afternoon train for Fairhaven, and went back to my capable fiancee.

But I walked over to Willoughby Hall that night and found Charteris alone in his queer library, among the serried queer books and the portraits of his "literary creditors." When I came into the apartment he was mending a broken tea-cup, for he peculiarly delighted in such infinitesimal task-work; but the vexed countenance at once took on the fond young look my coming would invariably provoke, and he shoved aside the fragments….

We talked of trifles; apropos of nothing, Charteris said, "Yes,—but, then, I devoted the morning to drawing up my will." And I laughed over such forethought.

The man rose and with clenched fist struck upon the littered table. "It is in the air. I swear to you that, somehow, I have been warned. But always I have been favoured—Why, man, I protest that never in my life have I encountered any person in associating with whom I did not condescend, with reason to back me! Yet today Death stands within arm's reach, and I have accomplished—some three or four little books! And yet—why, Ashtaroth's Lackey, now—Yes, by God! it is perfected speech such as few other men have ever written. I know it, and I do not care at all even though you piteous dullards should always lack the wit to recognise and revere perfected speech when it confronts you. But presently I die! and there is nothing left of me save the inefficient testimony of those three or four little books!"

I patted his shoulder and protested he had over-worked himself.

"Eh, well," he said, and with that easy laugh I knew of old; "in any event, I have been thinking for a whole two hours of my wife, and of how from the very beginning I have utilised her, and of how good and credulous she is, and of how happy I have made her—! For I have made her happy. That is the preposterous part of it—"

"Why, yes; Anne loves you very dearly. Oh, I think that everybody is irrationally fond of you, John. No, that is not a compliment, it is rather the reverse. It is simply an instance of what I have been brooding over all this afternoon,—that we like people on account of their good qualities and love them on account of their defects. I honestly believe that the cornerstone of affection is the agreeable perception of our superiority in some one point, at least, to the beloved. And that is why so many people are fond of you, I think."

He laughed a little. "And de te fabula—Yet I would distinguish. You think me a futile person and not, as we will put it, a disastrously truthful person, and so on through the entire list of all those so-called vices which are really just a habit of not doing this or that particular thing. Well! it is no longer a la mode to talk about God,—yet I must confess to an old-fashioned faith in our Author's existence and even in His amiability. I believe He placed me in this colourful world, and that He is not displeased because I have spent therein some forty-odd years pleasurably. Then too I have not wasted that pleasure, I have philanthropically passed it on. I have bequeathed posterity the chance to spend an enjoyable half-hour or so over one or two little books. That is not much to claim, but it is something."

John Charteris was talking to himself now.

"Had I instead the daily prayers of seven orphans, or the proud consciousness of having always been afraid to do what I wanted to,—which I take to be the universally accredited insurance of a blissful eternity,—or even a whole half-column with portrait in the New York papers to indicate what a loss my premature demise had been to America,—or actually all three together, say, to exhibit as the increment of this period, I honestly cannot imagine any of the more intelligent archangels lining up to cheer my entry into Paradise. I believe, however, that to be contented, to partake of the world's amenities with moderation as a sauce, and to aggrieve no fellow-being, except in self-protection, and to make other people happy as often as you find it possible, is a recipe for living that will pass muster even in heaven. There you have my creed; and it may not be impeccable, but I believe in it."

"You have forgotten something," I said, with a grin. "'One must not think too despondently nor too often of the grim Sheriff who arrives anon to dispossess you, no less than all the others, nor of any subsequent and unpredictable legal adjustments.' See, here it is, your own words printed in the book."

"Dear me, did I say that? How nicely phrased it is! Well! you and I have defiantly preserved the gallant attitude in an era not very favorable thereto. And we seem to prosper—as yet—"

"But certainly! We are the highly exceptional round pegs that flourish like green bay-trees in a square hole," I summed it up. "Presently of course our place knoweth us not. But in the mean while—well, as it happens, I was recalling to-day how adroitly I scaled the summit of human wisdom when I was only fourteen. For I said then, 'You can have a right good time first, any way, if you keep away from ugly things and fussy people.' And at twenty-five I stick to it."

"I wonder now if it is not at a price?" said Charteris, rather mirthlessly. "Either way, you have as yet the courage of the unconvicted. And you have managed, out of it all, to get together the makings of an honest book. I do not generally believe in heaping flattery upon young authors, but if I had written that last book of yours it would not grieve me. Even so, I wonder—? But it is dreary here, in this old house, with all my wife's high-minded ancestors chilling the air. Come, let us concoct some curious sort of drink."

I looked at him compassionately. "And have Bettie staying up to let me in and smelling it on me! You must be out of your head."

And then Charteris laughed and derided me, and afterward we chatted for a good two hours,—quite at random, and disposing of the most important subjects, as was our usage when in argument, in a half-sentence.

It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against, and I enjoyed it. Taking him by and large, I loved the little fellow as I have loved no other man.

30.

He Gilds the Weather-Vane

But I would not go along with Charteris the next morning when he came by the Hamlyns' on his way to King's College. I could not, because I was labouring over a batch of proof-sheets; and as I laboured my admiration for the very clever young man who had concocted this new book augmented comfortably; so that I told Charteris he was a public nuisance, and please to go to Tillietudlem.

He had procured the key to the Library,—for the College had not opened as yet,—and meant to borrow an odd volume or so of Lucian. Charteris had evolved the fantastic notion of treating Lucian's Zeus as a tragic figure. He sketched a sympathetic picture of the fallen despot, and of the smokeless altars, girdled by a jeering rabble of so-called philosophers, and of how irritating it must be to anybody to have your actual existence denied. Did I not see the pathos of poor Zeus's situation with the god business practically "cornered," and the Jews getting all the trade?

I informed him that the only pathos in life just at present was my inability to disprove, in default of abolishing, the existence of people who bothered me when I was busy. So Charteris went away, just as Byam brought the mail from the post-office.

2

There were two cheques from magazines. Life was very pleasant, in a quiet uneventful world. The Fairhaven Gazette for the week had come, too, to indicate that, as usual, nothing of grave import was happening in an agreeably monotonous world. True, the Bulgarians were issuing an appeal to civilization on the ground that they objected to being massacred, and cyclones were wrecking towns and killing quite a number of persons in Florida, and the strikes in Colorado were leading to divers homicides; but in Fairhaven these things did not seem to matter. And so the front page of the Gazette was, rightfully, reserved for Plans of the College for the Session of 1903-4….

I looked again. The President was explaining that he had intended no discourtesy to Sir Thomas Lipton by declining to attend the Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club dinner; Major Delmar had failed to beat Lou Dillon's time, on the same track; the National Dressmakers' Association had declared that the kangaroo walk and Gibson shoulders would shortly be eschewed by all really fashionable women; and these matters were more interesting, of course, but certainly no cause for excitement. Well, I reflected, no news was good news proverbially; and I was content to let the axiom pass.

In fine, there was nothing to worry over anywhere. And the book was going to be good, quite astonishingly good….

And yonder Bettie waited for me, and I could hear the piano that proclaimed she was not idle. I was ineffably content; and at ease within a rather kindly universe, taking it by and large….

"Quite a nice Setebos, after all! a big, fine generous-hearted fellow, who doesn't bother to keep accounts to the last penny. I heartily approve of Setebos, and Bettie ought not to rag Him so. She would think it tremendously nice and boyish of me if I were to go impulsively and tell her something like that—"

So I decided I had worked quite long enough.

3

But as I reached out toward the portieres, a man came into the room, entering from the hall-way. And I gave a little whistling sound of astonishment and hastened to him with extended hand.

"My dear fellow," I began; "why, have you dropped from the moon?"

"They—they told me you were here," said Jasper Hardress, and paused to moisten his lips. "My wife died, yonder in Montana, ten days ago last Thursday,—yes, it was on a Tuesday she died, I think."

And I was silent for a breathing-space. "Yes?" I said, at last; for I had seen the shining thing in Jasper Hardress's hand, and I was wondering now why he had pocketed the toy, and for how long.

"It was of a fever she died. She was delirious,—oh, quite three days.
And she talked in her delirium."

I began to smile; it was like witnessing a play. "Yonder is Bettie and my one chance of manhood; and blind chance, just the machination of a tiny microbe, entraps me as I tread toward all this. I was wrong about Setebos. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven."

I said, aloud: "Well, Hardress, you wouldn't have me dispute the veracity of a lady?"

But the man did not appear to hear me. "Oh, it was very horrible," he said. "Oh, I would like you, first of